Honors Fellowships

Meagan Phillips

My goal is to explore how anthropomorphism – in this case, attributing human qualities to nonhuman entities – impacts our understanding of nonhuman animals in animated children’s films such as Bambi and The Lion King. Does giving a lion the ability to speak make viewers empathize more with the lion? Or does that anthropomorphism turn the lion into a mere stand-in for a human character?

Hometown: Williamsburg, VirginiaHobbies: I enjoy spending time with my cats, hiking and birdwatching, painting, reading and writing novels, and learning new vegan recipes with my partner (we joke that if our career plans don’t pan out, we’ll open our own vegan minimal waste cat cafe/animal sanctuary with an organic garden).Fun Fact: I watched Disney’s Robin Hood so many times when I was little that the tape broke. Watching the same Disney movie two or three times a day for over a week was not unusual for me.